As thousands of Generation Y college graduates flood the workforce this spring, the nation’s employers may want to brace themselves for a new crop of entitlement-minded workers.

Research conducted by Paul Harvey, assistant professor of management at the University of New Hampshire, shows that members of Generation Y are more entitlement-minded than older workers. For employers, that means more employees who feel entitled to undeserved preferential treatment, who are more prone to get into workplace conflicts and who are less likely to enjoy their job.

“Managers have reported a lot of problems associated with this – primarily that these employees have unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback. Basically entitlement involves having an inflated view of oneself, and managers are finding that younger employees are often very resistant to anything that doesn’t involve praise and rewards,” Harvey says.

They've won so many video games and written and sent so many text messages that after such accomplishments surely they deserve big rewards by now. Of course they feel entitled.

Gen Y could top other generations in their willingness to take credit for the success of others. This bodes poorly for people who really are productive.

According to Harvey, people who feel entitled to preferential treatment more often than not exhibit self-serving attributional styles -- the tendency to take credit for good outcomes and blame others when things go wrong. And people with self-serving attributional styles are less happy in their jobs and more apt to cause conflict in the workplace, especially with their supervisors.

I suspect the movement to boost child self esteem is at least partially responsible for this state of affairs. Teaching kids how wonderful they are even before they've accomplished anything will tend to make the kids think they deserve stuff just for being so great.

There are three formidable obstacles confronting college graduates today. One, the economy, though improving at a glacial pace, is still a wreck. There are no jobs, and the jobs that do exist aren't the kinds anyone in his right mind would have spent $100,000 to $200,000 to land. Two, nothing in most middle-class kids' lives has prepared them emotionally for the world they are about to enter. Three, the legacy costs that society has imposed on young people will be a millstone around their necks for decades. Who's going to pay for the health care bill? Gen Y. Who's going to pay off the federal deficit? Gen Y. Who's going to fund all those cops' and teachers' and firemen's pensions? Gen Y. Who's going to support Baby Boomers as they suck the Social Security System dry while wheezing around Tuscany? Gen Y.

Even as generations have become accustomed to entitlements the country has become less able to deliver. In the 2010s decades of accumulating debt and entitlements will collide with Peak Oil and demographic deterioration. California and Greece show us what is in store.